Page:Philosophical Review Volume 12.djvu/661

Thus, for example, one of the most popular methods has been the theological. There can be no doubt that morality and religion have been closely connected in human experience. It is true that in some cases morality seems to have cast loose from religion altogether, but there are many thinkers who regard this divorce as merely temporary and accidental. They maintain that morality is rooted in man's relation to the Infinite and Eternal Ground of Things. Hence, they proceed, we must first work out a true theology, and ethics will be but a corollary from it. Not only is this a favorite way of dealing with the subject in books, but also in popular thought there is a marked tendency to regard morality as somehow dependent upon religion. Now, whatever may be said in favor of this method of solving the ethical problem, it is clear that an ethics thus obtained is not a natural science. It may satisfy some thinkers, but there always have been, and there probably always will be, persons unsatisfied with this procedure, as they are unsatisfied with an attempt to study the nature of the physical universe by theological means. Why not take the facts of the moral life and investigate them by the same methods that we apply to the study of other empirical facts? Why not be scientific in our treatment of the subject? When we come to think of it, it is hard to see why not, unless there is something in the nature of this particular subject which makes it intractable by this method ; and that there is such a difficulty cannot properly be asserted until various attempts have been made without success. Even then the failure may be due to the difficulty of the subject, and not to any impossibility inherent in the nature of the problem. Before scientific ethics can be ruled out as impracticable, it must be shown conclusively that there is something in morality which science cannot grapple with, and no satisfactory demonstration of this fact has been given. It is easy enough to say what science has not done. It is not easy to say what science cannot do. It may be true that, after all the thought that has been spent on morality by men who have approached the subject with scientific methods, much remains unillumined; that does not prove that ethics is not and cannot be a science. As a matter of fact, however, science has done more than theology to make